Paleo-fantasy and Ancient Alien Contact

 In partnership with Conway Hall.

Tuesday 10 November 2020

7.30pm (BST)

Please register for this event at the following booking link: Book Now.  

Conway Hall is a charity and we politely ask you to add a donation of at least £5 when registering.

Facebook event page. 

Do you believe that aliens built the pyramids? Do you imagine cavemen going out to club a bear while cavewomen stayed home with the kids? Did you learn in school that the Greeks invented civilisation? When you see the image of apes evolving into man, do you stop to question the idea that it represents a progression to the ultimate goal of contemporary Western civilisation? 

These are all myths about the ancient world perpetuated by the media, uninformed pseudo-scientists, and sometimes outright racists. The way we teach history tends to focus a model of humanity that’s reinforcing 1950’s white gender roles and reproducing capitalist patriarchy. Stacy Hackner will discuss a few ways in which a common conception of the past doesn’t add up, why we’ve come to think of history in this biased way, and how we can continue to question and correct these misunderstandings.

Stacy Hackner is a human fact generator and archaeologist specialising in human bones, focusing on a reassessment of gender-based social roles in the ancient world, drawing attention to ideas we hold that are based in 1960s ideals of family life (“man hunt, woman cook!” is a hard belief to kill). She has worked in a number of dusty holes across the globe, most recently in a 19th-century cemetery in Cyprus, and has lectured at UCL and Birkbeck in archaeology, epidemiology, and museum studies. Stacy also believes that science needs to be more public-facing and decolonialised, and hosts science communication activities at museums and festivals to this end, while also managing a public engagement team at UCL Museums. 

Students describe her as “a good reason to wake up before 9” and her lectures as “kinda like falling into a Wikipedia hole”. She enjoys camping, queer cinema, and giving internet trolls a smackdown. She will always pop up on your feed to share a terrible archaeology pun.

 In partnership with Conway Hall.

Tuesday 10 November 2020

7.30pm (BST)

Please register for this event at the following booking link: Book Now.  

Conway Hall is a charity and we politely ask you to add a donation of at least £5 when registering.

Facebook event page. 

Calling the Spirits – A History of Seances

In partnership with Conway Hall.

Monday 19 October 2020

7.30pm (BST)

Please register for this event at the following booking link: Book Now.  

Conway Hall is a charity and we politely ask you to add a donation of at least £5 when registering. 

Facebook event page. 

Lisa Morton investigates the eerie history of our conversations with the dead, from necromancy in Homer’s Odyssey to the emergence of Spiritualism – when Victorians were entranced by mediums and the seance was born.

Among our cast are the Fox sisters, teenagers surrounded by ‘spirit rappings’; Daniel Dunglas Home, the ‘greatest medium of all time’; Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose unlikely friendship was forged, then riven, by the afterlife; and Helen Duncan, the medium whose trial in 1944 for witchcraft proved more popular to the public than news about the war. Her book, Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances, also considers Ouija boards, modern psychics and paranormal investigations, and is illustrated with engravings, fine art (from beyond) and photographs. Morton begs the question: is anybody there . . .?

In partnership with Conway Hall.

Monday 19 October 2020

7.30pm (BST)

Please register for this event at the following booking link: Book Now.  

Conway Hall is a charity and we politely ask you to add a donation of at least £5 when registering. 

Facebook event page.

Online: Merpeople: A Human History

In partnership with Conway Hall.
Vaughn Scribner: Merpeople: A Human History
Tuesday 6 October 2020
7.30pm (BST)

Please register for this event at the following booking link: Book Now.  

Conway Hall is a charity and we politely ask you to add a donation of at least £5 when registering. 
Facebook event page. 

People have been fascinated by merpeople since ancient times. From the sirens of Homer’s Odyssey to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid and the film Splash (1984), myths, stories and legends of half-human, half-fish creatures abound. In modern times ‘mermaiding’ has gained popularity among cosplayers throughout the world.

In his book Merpeople: A Human History, Vaughn Scribner traces the long history of mermaids and mermen, taking in a wide variety of sources and striking images. From film to philosophy, church halls to coffee houses, ancient myth to modern science, Scribner shows that mermaids and tritons are – and always have been – everywhere.

In partnership with Conway Hall.
Vaughn Scribner: Merpeople: A Human History 
Tuesday 6 October 2020
7.30pm (BST)

Please register for this event at the following booking link: Book Now.  

Conway Hall is a charity and we politely ask you to add a donation of at least £5 when registering. 
Facebook event page. 

The Real Vampires

This event is cancelled and we shall be running it again, live, at a later date in 2021. Please keep a look out for forthcoming online events. We'll get there friends... we'll get there. 

Tuesday 13 October 2020
8pm (doors 7.45pm)
£5 / £2 concessions 
The Miller, 96 Snowsfields, London Bridge, London SE1 3SS
Tube & Rail: London Bridge
Tube: Borough
Event Facebook page


The real vampires were not suave, polished, cultivated or rich. They looked like ordinary dead peasants. Yet for those who believed in them, they were terrifying. So terrifying that they prompted live burials, nervous breakdown, hysterical paralysis and speechlessness. During a real vampire panic, an overworked, underfed community was so terrified that it found the energy to dig up eleven graves, and the wood to burn eleven corpses.

Richard Sugg discusses real vampires were so terrifying that the energy of fear they produced actually caused poltergeist attacks. In several cases, they were so terrifying that they quite literally scared people to death.

From Russia to New England, from the Scottish borders to Crete, and from the Bronze Age to the days of Twilight, Richard's book The Real Vampires takes the reader on an unforgettable tour of wonder, horror and strangeness. It will be available on the night.

Richard specialises in marginal, forgotten or tabooed histories, as showcased in his previous writing on a variety of supernatural and unusual themes.

Tuesday 13 October 2020
8pm (doors 7.45pm)
£5 / £2 concessions 
The Miller, 96 Snowsfields, London Bridge, London SE1 3SS
Tube & Rail: London Bridge
Tube: Borough
Event Facebook page

Online: UFO Culture and Why We See Flying Saucers

Tuesday 23 June 2020
7.30 pm BST (GMT+1) 
This event will be held ONLINE. Please register online at the following link: Book now. 
Join this event on Facebook. 

Conway Hall is a charity who have lost almost all of their income. We politely ask for a donation when registering for this event.

More than seventy years since Kenneth Arnold saw erratic objects “like a saucer if you skip it across the water”, UFOs have been making headlines once again. On December 17, 2017, the New York Times ran a front-page story about an approximately five-year Pentagon program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The article hinted, and its sources clearly said in subsequent television interviews, that some of the ships in question couldn’t be linked to any country. The implication, of course, was that they might be linked to other solar systems.


The UFO community—those who had been thinking about, seeing, and analysing supposed flying saucers (or triangles or chevrons) for years—was surprisingly skeptical of the revelation. Their incredulity and doubt rippled across the internet. Many of the people most invested in UFO reality weren’t really buying it. And as Sarah Scoles did her own digging, she ventured to dark, conspiracy-filled corners of the internet, to a former paranormal research center in Utah, and to the hallways of the Pentagon.

In They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers Scoles met the bigwigs, the scrappy upstarts, the field investigators, the rational and the unhinged of this sprawling community. How do they interact with each other? How do they interact with “anomalous phenomena”? And how do they (as any group must) reflect the politics and culture of the larger world around them?

—

Sarah Scoles is a science writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, Smithsonian, The Washington Post, Scientific American, Popular Science, Discover, New Scientist, Aeon, and Wired. A former editor at Astronomy magazine, Scoles worked at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the location of the first-ever SETI project. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

This talk will be held online using the Zoom application (available for PC, Mac, iOS and Android). A link to join the talk will be sent to ticketholders on the day of the event.

Tuesday 23 June 2020
7.30 pm BST (GMT+1) 
This event will be held ONLINE. Please register online at the following link: Book now. 
Join this event on Facebook. 
Conway Hall is a charity who have lost almost all of their income. We politely ask for a donation when registering for this event.

Monumental Memories – Indigenous Memory and Stonehenge

Saturday 20 June 2020
1 pm BST (GMT+1) 
This event will be held ONLINE. Please register online at the following link: Book now. 

This event is in partnership with Conway Hall. Conway Hall is a charity and we politely ask you to add a donation when registering.

This talk will be held online using the Zoom application (available for PC, Mac, iOS and Android). A link to join the talk will be sent to ticket holders on the day of the event.
—

Without writing, indigenous elders memorised a vast amount of factual information on which survival depended both physically and culturally: knowledge of thousands of animals and plants, astronomical charts, vast navigation networks, genealogies, geography and geology… the list goes on and on. How did they remember so much? And why does this explain the purpose of ancient monuments including Stonehenge, Easter Island and the Nasca Lines? Can we use these memory methods in contemporary life?

After discovering that the true purpose of monuments like Easter Island and Stonehenge were to act as memory palaces, Dr Lynne Kelly takes this knowledge and introduces us to the best memory techniques humans have ever devised, from ancient times and the Middle Ages to methods used by today’s memory athletes. A memory champion herself, Kelly tests all these methods and demonstrate the extraordinary capacity of our brains at any age.

Dr Lynne Kelly, author of The Memory Code and Memory Craft, will explain the exact mechanisms used and why this explains the purpose of many enigmatic monuments around the world – and that we have a great deal to learn from the extraordinary mnemonic skills of indigenous cultures.
—



This talk will be held online using the Zoom application (available for PC, Mac, iOS and Android). A link to join the talk will be sent to ticket holders on the day of the event.

Saturday 20 June 2020
1 pm BST (GMT+1)
This event will be held ONLINE. Please register online at the following link: Book now. 

This event is in partnership with Conway Hall. Conway Hall is a charity and we politely ask you to add a donation when registering.

Online: Miracles of Our Own Making – A History of Paganism

7.15pm for 7.30pm Tuesday 12 May 2020
Online event in partnership with Conway Hall
Prebook Tickets. Our friends and partners at Conway Hall are a charity so do please add a donation when registering for a ticket. Please give what you can.
This event will be on Zoom, a link will be emailed to attendees on the day. 
Facebook event page (Jooooin us.)

Hasting Jack-in-the-Green Photo: Duncan Price

Miracles of Our Own Making is a historical overview of magic in the British Isles, from the ancient peoples of Britain to the rich and cosmopolitan landscape of contemporary paganism. We explore the beliefs of the Druids, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, the alchemy of the Elizabethan Court and the witch trials. We encounter grimoires, ceremonial magic and the Romantic revival of arcane deities. The influential and well known – the Golden Dawn, Wicca and figures such as Aleister Crowley – are considered alongside the everyday ‘cunning folk’ who formed the magical fabric of previous centuries.

Ranging widely across literature, art, science and beyond, Liz Williams debunks many of

the prevailing myths surrounding magical practice, past and present, while offering a rigorously researched and highly accessible account of what it means to be a pagan today.

Liz Williams holds a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge and is a widely published writer and journalist. She lives in Glastonbury, where she co-owns a witchcraft shop, and where she also lectures in creative writing.

This talk will be held online using the Zoom application (available for PC, Mac, iOS and Android). A link to join the talk will be sent to ticket holders around one hour before the event starts.

7.15pm for 7.30pm Tuesday 12 May 2020
Online event in partnership with Conway Hall
Prebook Tickets. Our friends and partners at Conway Hall are a charity so do please add a donation when registering for a ticket. Please give what you can.
This event will be on Zoom, a link will be emailed to attendees on the day. 
Facebook event page (Jooooin us.)

Shapeshifters: A History Online Event!

7.15pm for 7.30pm Wednesday 15 April 2020
Online event in partnership with Conway Hall
Prebook Tickets. We are requesting £3 or more donation for us and for Conway Hall Ethical Society. 

There is something about a shapeshifter – a person who can transform into an animal – that captures our imagination; that causes us to want to howl at the moon, or flit through the night like a bat. Werewolves, vampires, demons and other weird creatures appeal to our animal nature, our dark side, our desire to break free of the bonds of society and proper behaviour. Rituals in early cultures worldwide seemingly allowed shamans, sorcerers, witches and wizards to transform at will into animals and back again.

Today there are millions of people who believe that shapeshifters walk among us and may even be world leaders. Real or imaginary, shapeshifters lurk deep in our psyches and remain formidable cultural icons. The myths and magic surrounding shapeshifters are brought vividly to life in John B. Kachuba’s compelling and original cultural history. Featuring a fantastic and ghoulish array of examples from history, literature, film, tv and computer games, Shapeshifters explores our secret desire to become something other than human.


Shapeshifters: A History will be available to buy on the night.

John B. Kachuba is an award-winning author and Creative Writing instructor at Ohio University. He has investigated over one hundred haunted locations around the world and his books include Ghosthunters (2007) and Dark Entry (2018).

7.15pm (7.30pm start) Wednesday 15 April 2020

Online event in partnership with Conway Hall

Prebook Tickets. We are requesting £3 or more donation for us and for Conway Hall Ethical Society. 

The Shakespeare Authorship Question

......a question without an author?

7.45pm (8pm start) Wednesday 29 April 2020
£4 / £2 Concessions (Advance tickets)
The Bell 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX
Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.
Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East
Facebook Page

We are afraid we have to cancel this talk. We hope reschedule it in more healthy and safe times so we can hear Professor Leahy speak. 

We are really sorry everyone, we shall arrange refunds.

Shakespeare is regarded as the greatest writer who has ever existed. His works are famed throughout the world and are on the syllabuses of schools, colleges and universities. But many believe he did not in fact write the plays and that claims about his authorship are founded in a mixture of myth and willful misinformation. Our cultures seem to be fixated upon the idea of the single author/genius and so, in Shakespeare's case, we fall into a trap of finding the answer we desperately seek despite an almost total lack of evidence. This is also true of the alternative authors posited as the writer of Shakespeare’s works.

Prof William Leahy, vice-provost of Brunel University, explores how we have fallen into this trap, led by an academic community that continues to tell the same old story while knowing that much of it is untrue. He considers the character of the Shakespeare Authorship Question and posits that Shakespeare the author is a myth – as indeed is the belief that any single author wrote the works.

7.45pm (8pm start) Wednesday 29 April 2020
£4 / £2 Concessions (Advance tickets)
The Bell 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX
Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.
Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East
Facebook Page

A New Demonology: John Keel and the Mothman Prophecies

7.45pm (8pm start) Wednesday 25 March 2020
£4 / £2 Concessions (Advance tickets)
The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX
Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.
Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East
Facebook Page

We are afraid we have to cancel this talk. We hope reschedule it in more healthy and safe times so we can hear David speak. 

We are really sorry everyone, we shall arrange refunds.

From the 1960s the “ultraterrestrial hypothesis” became a popular alternative to the ETH for UFOs and other fortean anomalies as a result of the writings of the American journalist John Keel (1930-2009). Keel’s theories are best known today via his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies that chronicled an outbreak of weirdness in the Ohio Valley, USA, that included visits by a winged humanoid (the Mothman), Men-in-Black, UFOs and animal mutilations. His book had a Hollywood makeover in 2002 and the legend is now marked by an annual Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

Dr David Clarke’s talk is based on an extended interview with Keel during his visit to the UK in 1992 and the contents of his forthcoming chapter “The Mothman of West Virginia: a case study in legendary storytelling” in The Contemporary Legend Casebook 2: North American Monsters (Utah University Press 2020)

7.45pm (8pm start) Wednesday 25 March 2020
£4 / £2 Concessions (Advance tickets)
The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX
Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.
Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East
Facebook Page

Margaret Murray and modern Witchcraft

Tuesday 3 March 2020
8pm (doors 7.45pm)
£5 / £2 concessions (Advanced tickets)
The Miller, 96 Snowsfields, London Bridge, London SE1 3SS
Tube & Rail: London Bridge
Tube: Borough
Event Facebook page

For the last 20 years or more, modern Witches have been involved in a project of historical revisionism. They’ve rejected the claims made by Margaret Murray, and borrowed by Gerald Gardner, that modern Witchcraft is a direct continuation from an archaic pan-European fertility cult. Instead, they follow the arguments of historians that Murray’s work was heavily flawed; for some her work provides a valuable foundation myth, while others prefer to reject it altogether in search of more realist histories.

However, Murray’s arguments are also intricately woven into histories and practices of modern Witchcraft, and continue to be interpreted as histories of Witchcraft are rewritten and shaped over time.

Anthropologist Dr Helen Cornish of Goldsmiths College shows how responses to Murray’s work since the turn of the millennium help us consider what counts as history (good, bad, speculative or otherwise) as well contemporary Witchcraft.

Tuesday 3 March 2020
8pm (doors 7.45pm)
£5 / £2 concessions (Advanced tickets)
The Miller, 96 Snowsfields, London Bridge, London SE1 3SS
Tube & Rail: London Bridge
Tube: Borough
Event Facebook page

A New Magic at the Old Mill

7.45pm (8pm start) Wednesday 26 February 2020
£4 / £2 Concessions (Advance tickets)
The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX
Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.
Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East
Facebook Page

To coincide with the launch of his new book Wicca on the Isle of Man: Gerald Gardner and the Crucible of Modern Witchcraft, Dr John Callow is looking at the creation and growth of the Museum of Magic & Witchcraft on the Isle of Man, and the impact of Gerald Gardner within the context of the collection and his curatorship of magical artefacts.

He will explore the dramatic synthesis that Gardner achieved, during the last 13 years of his life, that stripped away the demonic elements of witchcraft and emphasised, in their stead, fresh sources of mystery drawn from nature and tribal religions.

7.45pm (8pm start) Wednesday 26 February 2020
£4 / £2 Concessions (Advance tickets)
The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX
Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.
Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East
Facebook Page

A Skeptic’s Guide to Aliens

7.45pm Wednesday 29 January 2020
£4 / £2 Concessions (Advance tickets)
The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX
Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.
Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East
Facebook Page

Are aliens really visiting our planet on a regular basis? Are people really being abducted by aliens and subjected to bizarre medical investigations? Even worse, are the aliens engaged upon a sinister cross-breeding project to produce human-alien hybrids?

Chris French, Professor of Anomalistic Psychology at Goldsmiths College, will explore psychological aspects of various types of alien contact claims, ranging from simple sightings of unidentified flying objects to alien abduction experiences. Along the way, he’ll review the history of UFOs within society and discuss the risks inherent in the “memory recovery” techniques employed by some ufologists. 

Chris will argue that all claims of alien contact can be plausibly accounted for in terms of known psychological phenomena such as sleep paralysis and false memories.

7.45pm Wednesday 29 January 2020
£4 / £2 Concessions (Advance tickets)
The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX
Train and Tube: Liverpool Street.
Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East
Facebook Page